A Boston Italian's health and fitness journey

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Turns out I bake when I am anxious and usually I am anxious on Sunday nights before my work week. Tonight’s anxiety baking experiment was coffee cake! These were super quick to prep and bake and are easy snacks to take on the go! Here’s what you need:

I always buy too many bananas at once and didn’t want to freeze my extras like I usually do so I decided why not throw together banana bread for the first time ever! I modified an already “healthified” recipe from Pinterest and was thrilled with how it came out! Plenty of flavor and very moist (yeah I said it). Had to share the recipe right away mainly because writing this post is a distraction from me eating the entire loaf of bread. Here’s what you need:

2 large bananas

1 whole egg

1 egg white

160g oat flour (I blended quick oats)

30g all purpose flour

1/2 cup vanilla Greek yogurt

1/4 cup maple syrup (I used Walden Farms)

1 tbs almond butter

2 tbs dark chocolate chips

2 tbs ground cinnamon

1 1/2 tbs baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

3-5 packets Stevia (to your desire)

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350F

Mix dry ingredients and place aside

Mix wet ingredients with mashed banana

Mix all ingredients (leave chocolate chips out)

Pour batter into bread pan and mix in chocolate chips

Add extra cinnamon to the top

Bake for 35-40 mins

The loaf makes 12 servings 108 calories per slice! (3F/18C/4P)

I might even go wild and make a protein icing to top this with. To be continued…

My biggest struggle by far when it comes to keeping a healthy diet is the fact that I have a major sweet tooth. I’ve had a lot of people recently comment on my “will power” and I just want to point out that I don’t always have will power when it comes to my diet and to be honest lately all I’ve wanted to do is crush Ben & Jerry’s before bed. I get the sense that many people have this same sweet tooth struggle so I thought I’d share a few tips and tricks that have helped me over the years! And to keep this a bit more entertaining I decided to throw some New Girl memes in the mix 🙂

1. Coffee and/or Tea

I instantly want dessert after dinner. It’s clockwork. Something that helps me is making an after dinner coffee or tea. If you own a Keurig, Bed Bath and Beyond actually has a variety of dessert kcup flavors (chocolate doughnut is currently my favorite).

2. Healthy dessert alternatives

There are a lot of ways to make your own delicious desserts without all of the excess carbs/fats. Some of my favorite creations include the protein ice cream (some may call this protein sludge) protein brownies, mug cakes, waffles (my black bean prownie recipe is posted here). There are also a few low calorie ice cream brands that you can find in your local grocery store such as Arctic Zero however, I have found that my own ice cream creations are actually more tasty than Arctic Zero which tastes a little too “icy” for me (just my opinion). However, if you’re a Greek yogurt fan I HIGHLY recommend Yasso frozen treats or Light & Fit Greek yogurts. Every single flavor I have tried has been amazing for both of these brands!

3. Sugar Free Gum

There is pretty much every flavor sugar free gum out there at this point. A recent find that I really like is the Project 7 Birthday Cake gourmet gum. I’ve found this brand at Target and Walgreens. Extra also has their “Dessert Delights” flavors which have a longer lasting flavor compared to most other SF gum brands that I’ve tried. Couldn’t find a bubble gum related meme but this is close enough…

4. Fruit

This could be filed under “healthy dessert alternatives”but fruit is a great snack that can help satisfy that sweet craving with natural sugars instead of added sugars or “fake” ingredients which provide much less nutritional value.

5. Just eat the damn dessert

I am not saying go house an entire jar of cookies every night but treating yourself in moderation is perfectly healthy. Completely restricting yourself is just not the way to live and could lead to stronger cravings and further problems down the road. For me, balance has been key from a physical and mental perspective. Unless you are prepping for a competition or something, treats here and there should certainly be welcome 🙂

So there you have it! I’d love to hear what has helped you all curb those sweet tooth cravings!

Okay so it’s not exactly a diet but just a little experiment that I decided to do last week. Hopefully that title grabbed some attention though 🙂 I recently shared on Instagram that I was starting to get sick of my diet and that goes against everything that I preach so I decided to switch it up a bit, particularly adding lean beef and turkey as protein. I incorporated 1-2 healthy burger creations into my meals every day last week. The results? Very satisfied. My current fitness goal is to slowly lean out and I really didn’t change up my current calorie intake or macro split. If anything I added a bit more carbs this week. I was easily able to incorporate a lot of delicious burger-based meals into my diet without steering off plan. If anything I actually felt leaner by the end of the week. I didn’t weigh myself before and after because I like to focus more on how I look and feel to determine progress and the goal here wasn’t to show a decrease on the scale. The goal was to show that your diet does not have to be boring to be healthy. It’s sometimes hard to distinguish between being hungry v.s. not satisfied which is why I needed to mix things up a bit. This was a fun way to mix up my diet and satisfy my burger cravings! Below is a recap of my favorite creations from the week:

Stuffed eggplant boats= life changing. Personally, you could probably put cheese and tomatoes on anything and I would love it. These were super delicious and extremely filling (like most of my meals). One boat is a meal on its own. This also did not take long to prep. Admittedly, I thought it would take forever which is why I have avoided trying to make these for so long. It probably took me about 10-15 minutes to prep and 25 minutes to cook!

Ingredients:

1 eggplant

1/2 bell pepper

1 cup mushrooms

4 oz chicken (raw)

1 cup diced tomato

1/2 cup fat free mozzarella

1 tbs garlic

Directions:

Half and hallow eggplant

Preheat oven 400F

Cut chicken into 1 or 1/2 inch cubes

Place skillet on medium-high and toss chicken so that it partially cooks

Spread garlic on insides of eggplant

Dice peppers

Place chicken, peppers, mushrooms, tomato, and cheese inside halves

Bake in oven for 30 minutes or until eggplant is soft

Other options are to use the extra eggplant with the veggies. I just decided to mix things up and save the eggplant for a side the next day!

Lasagna is one of my favorite Italian meals but the calories can certainly add up and leave you feeling like a useless couch potato for hours. Okay so that might have been a little aggressive but I know that I personally have a hard time with portion control when it comes to lasagna. I mean, what is really a “slice” anyways? I was lucky enough to grow up with the fabulous cooking of my mother and never actually cooked my own lasagna before because why mess with mama’s cooking! With that said, I have been on a serious zucchini kick lately. Zucchini wheels, zucchini pasta, zucchini oats, you name it. With plenty of zucchini and lasagna essentials in the fridge, I decided to experiment in the kitchen! The taste exceeded my expectations and kept my tummy full and happy! 1 serving (1/4 dish) is only 285 calories ( 7g f, 18g c, 40g p). I would also like to mention that 1/4 of this dish is a VERY generous serving size. Below are the ingredients and recipe: